So far we have analyzed Internet oppression from a civilian point of view, but what about the military perspective? Aren't our valiant cyber warriors protecting us against those evil, evil attacks launched by the other countries (i.e. friends and foes)?

Well… no.

CYBER WARFARE

The situation in this area is complicated and there are several books that came out lately which provide long and accurate expositions. However, for our purposes, we will distill everything down to the most basic concepts. They are:

Countries are launching CNE attacks on each other all the time, to the point that they are routine now. The US is in Chinese networks to monitor their attacks to US. The Chinese are (mostly) in commercial networks stealing… sorry… "borrowering"… know how (or did you think, for example, that the Chinese developed their copy of the US F-35 Stealth Fighter -the J-31 fighter- based on their know-how and hard R&D?).

Countries (particularly Russia) have used CNA several times against… irritating countries such as Estonia.

The "Five Eyes" (i.e. US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) later on the "Nine Eyes" which became the "Fourteen Eyes" (see Wikipedia "Five Eyes") routinely intercept and monitor digital and analog information at the world-wide level on an un-imaginable scale. Furthermore, they cooperate among each other so that when one type of surveillance is forbidden by law in a specific territory by local agencies, then "foreign" agencies do it form their territory since they have no restrictions there!

And so, all this so-called military spying and hacking can be divided into two: outright military and the "gray area" which spills over into civilian life. That's right. You are being monitored and "surveilled" mostly through the use of military technology.

But this much we already know.

Then, how about "legit" military targets? Wouldn't CNA and CNE defend us from military cyber-actions? Wouldn't we need CNA and CNE to protect our National Security?

Well… no.

Throughout the years it has become patently obvious that defending against a well-organized CNA or CNE attack to a military network is quite difficult if not impossible. So much so that (as far as we know) all the actual intrusion exercises conducted by Cyber-agencies throughout the world against their own military systems almost always yielded the same result: massive penetration. Furthermore and just to demonstrate how difficult is to defend against a well-designed CNE or CNA attack, many of those exercises use cyber tools available to anybody off the Internet!

Basically all that surveillance is meaningless for all intents and purposes when it comes to defend our military assets… and the ones belonging to our friends… and the ones belonging to our enemies.

Fine. But what about CNA and CNE? What kind of military successes have they yielded?

Very few indeed.

Sure, ISIS leaders and so-called "Islamic extremist group leaders" keep getting blown up by drones... when their phones are being tracked by the NSA.

Iran's nuclear bomb program was severely damaged.

And? And?

Well, we are sure that there have been other successes, but, for the most part, the cost/reward ratio is ridiculously biased towards costs.

So, no. Even from a military perspective and with the exception of theft of high-level industrial information, CNA and CNE is a draw, for the most part.

In other words, everybody is doing it and so we have to do it too; that's the ultimate excuse. Just like the proliferation of nuclear bombs but without the radioactive fallout. Since eeeeverybody has them, we have to have them too.

The rationality of madness.

Cyber Mutual-Assured-Destruction.

Welcome to the new arms race.

Welcome to the future.

BACK TO CIVILIAN LIFE

But if CNA and CNE is mostly an ineffective defense against a military opponent, wouldn't such methods be devastating in civilian life?

In a word? No.

Really?

Really.

And we don't have to imagine it. It is happening right now.

A few examples: ransomware and the latest MongoDB ransoms.

In both cases as the attackers used high level encryption the response from "the authorities" was always the same: pay!

And even with this level of pervasive attacks life goes on. There was no major disruption of our key infrastructure. Banks are still operating. Utilities are working. The garbage gets collected and the mail delivered. If this would have been a military CNA, you could say goodbye to all that infrastructure. Overnight! Can't happen? It did happen when the Russians (allegedly… ejem!) did it to Estonia. Google it.

However in civilian life, those people that were attacked by ransom organizations are learning a tough lesson: be prepared or be devastated. And this is a healthy development in the ongoing race between hackers and patchers. This is normal. What is not normal is to raise the stakes to the point at which our entire livelihood can be destroyed overnight by a few simple lines of code!

That's the difference!

CONCLUSION

The point of this article is simple; we want you to be aware that Internet oppression is ongoing, pervasive and unstoppable. You, us and everybody personally, are being targeted using military-grade cyber tools.

As our misleading title indicates, this is not about the Military Internet Police but about Cyber Warfare at a global level directed against 65% of the population (today) but very likely to increase to 100% in the near future.

And now, the key question. Who is in charge? Who is to be blamed?

Excellent question. For that, we will answer with a simple Ancient Roman question: Cui Bono? (who benefits?) or, the same motto in modern times: "Follow The Money".

Who has the massive amounts of money required for these massive so-called "programs"?

The government.

Who benefits from those so-called "programs"?

The government (aka politicians and bureaucrats).

Could a private entity implement and deploy such extensive CNA and CNE operations?

No.

Why not?

Because they are prohibitively expensive. There simply is no profit in them.

Minor deployments against competitors may be justified, but nothing beyond that.

And so then what's the solution?

The solution is obvious and the one that we keep hammering about. The only way to change things is to get rid of all enablers of such programs, this is, all governments.

Governments gone means no money for those programs.

No money for programs means a free Internet (for the most part) and a natural drift towards the same state of affairs it had when it first started; if you don't like a product, just say NO! Otherwise, express yourself in any way you want!

The Internet Police is not here, the Military Internet Police is!

Our Internet is, in fact, under martial law.

It is now your choice. You can either continue voting or stop altogether.

Choose; Military Police or Freedom.

Because you know, you can't have both!

Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.